In theory, it was 50 miles shorter and easier. In Kyrgyzstan, I veered off the smooth tarmac road skirting the mountains to take a rural gravel track over two mountain passes. The map would sometimes offer a juicy looking shortcut that would not always turn out to be the best option. I knew roughly where I wanted to go but would often make adjustments based on local knowledge or information gleaned from cycle tourists heading the opposite direction.
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I would download a map a day or two before I crossed into a country, figuring out where to go from there.
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To navigate, I used a phone app called , which provided offline maps using OpenStreetMap data. Amazingly, I had zero punctures the entire ride-tubeless tires are wonderful. My bike was set up with two panniers on the front, a rear seatpack, and a cut-up backpack strapped to the handlebars (a reconfigured remnant from the backpacking trip). I picked up my Revolt, and after a right royal send-off I began the 15,000km journey that would take me through 19 countries. That’s how I ended up at the Giant factory in Kunshan City, a little west of Shanghai. Many bikes are made in Asia, so I contacted some manufacturers to see if I could pick up a new bike from where they’re born. But instead of flying back, I would ride. When some friends planned a backpacking trip to Asia, I decided to join them. That three-week trip rekindled my love of bicycle travel and had me itching to go on a longer, more adventurous journey. I did that for two years and ended one stint by buying a bike and riding from Montreal to Cape Breton at the northern tip of Nova Scotia. I solved that problem by getting a job planting trees in the Canadian wilderness. Not knowing what I wanted to do after I finished school, I became a ski instructor in British Columbia, Canada. As you can tell, I’m a bit of a mile eater. In addition to bike touring from an early age, I also raced-but the distances were always too short. I remember our tent, pitched on volcanic sand, blowing down in a gale.
I did my first 100-mile ride when I was 10, and four years after that I accompanied my dad on a bike trip to the interior of Iceland. Their honeymoon was on a tandem, and my first cycling tour was a trip to Luxembourg with my dad when I was 7. My dad writes about bikes and travel for a living, and my doctor mum rides to work on an E-bike. All of this happened before the global pandemic, at a time when I could strap bags to a bicycle and ride from one side of the world to the other. It’s been more than a year since I completed my journey home to Newcastle in the north of England. To get my new Giant Revolt Advanced gravel bike home to the UK, I rode it all the way across Asia and Europe. I was lucky to get ahead of the curve by importing a bike from China-but I didn’t do it the typical way. Have you noticed the lack of bikes available in shops? That’s the bike boom for you.
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